The vocal tract actions deployed in spoken language are systematically governed by both contrastive (i.e., meaning encoding) properties of a word's segments and simulatneously by the structured informational aspects of the speaker’s plan, collectively referred to as

Inner workings of my vocal tract :)

phrase-level prosody. The goal of my research program is to understand how speakers integrate prosodic structure with segmental structure in speech planning and production. ​​​​

In my current postdoctoral project in Jody Kreiman’s voice study laboratory at UCLA, I am pursuing an interdisciplinary approach to the study of voice quality. Click here to learn more about my research.